Filipino Canadian paper marks 28th anniversary

Hermie and Mila Garcia load bundles of The Philippine Reporter from the dock of the press into their van.The paper celebrates its 25th anniversary this spring. (Toronto Star / Nicholas Keung)

(This article was published in the April 21, 2014 issue of Toronto Star. We are reprinting it on the occasion of the 28th anniversary of The Philippine Reporter. –Ed.)

Hermie and Mila Garcia, political prisoners under a dictatorship, did odd jobs to fund their own paper, which celebrates its 25th anniversary.

By Nicholas KeungThe Star Immigration Reporter

For the past 25 years, Hermie and Mila Garcia have followed the same routine every other week: up till the wee hours proof-reading and fact-checking on Thursday and then rising early Friday to check on the bundles coming off the press at a Yorkdale Mall area print shop, the ink still fresh on the pages of their family newspaper.

As their Philippine Reporter reaches its quarter-century milestone this spring, the couple has seen it grow from a 12-page, 2,000-copy black-and-white publication to a 56-page, 12,000-copy full-colour biweekly.

“When we came to Canada in 1984, it was supposed to be temporary,” says Hermie, 67.

He and his wife fled Manila after they were released from military camps under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos for reporting on the rampant exploitation of peasants and corruption in rural Philippines.

“Even after Marcos was ousted (in 1986), it still wasn’t safe for us and we decided to stay.”

With three young children in tow — sons Norman, now 44, and Lawrence, 39, and daughter Kalayaan, 37 — the Garcias found doors closed to them in Canada’s mainstream news media and they had to do survival jobs to make ends meet.

“I delivered Swiss Chalet chicken, pizza and even the Toronto Star, and did data entry, but looking for a job in mainstream media was always a priority,” said Hermie. “No one would take us because we didn’t have any Canadian experience. So we decided to put out our own paper in 1989.”

Historic turnover of the 25-year print collection of The Philippine Reporter to the prestigious Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library of the University of Toronto Libraries, the largest repository of rare manuscripts and books in Canada. The Reporter remains the only ethnic newspaper whose complete print collection is archived for research and public use. From left: Leslie Gesell, Mila Astorga-Garcia, Anne Dondertman (Director, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library), Hermie Garcia and Norman Garcia. (Photo: John Shoesmith)

The inaugural edition was produced on an Atari computer that did not have a hard drive, with a front-page story about Imelda Marcos seeking Corazon Aquino’s forgiveness after the collapse of her husband’s regime. There was also a local story by Mila about a campaign to urge a Canadian mining company to do an environmental cleanup in the Philippines.

The paper lost money every edition and was hit hard by the recession in the early 1990s.

“It was eating up into our limited resources. We worked on the paper after our day jobs. It was really hard on the family,” says Mila, 65, who worked at Toronto City Hall, first as a part-time clerk, retiring in 2011 as a research analyst in the policy office. “We were taking a big risk.”

Despite declining ad revenues, the couple stuck it out and was helped by an influx of Filipino immigrants in the mid-1990s, who were hungry for news from back home and in Canada.

The number of permanent residents coming from the Philippines has tripled in the last decade, to nearly 33,000 a year. The community has reached a critical mass that it now draws the mainstream market’s attention.

As news from back home becomes more accessible through the Internet, the Philippine Reporter has become more locally engaged, focusing on issues and events affecting Canada’s growing Filipino diaspora.

However, the publication’s mission to strive for social justice has never changed.

The paper has many proud achievements, says the couple, from getting a Scarborough mall to stop its racist practice of kicking out loitering Filipino youth to pressing for an inquest into the police shooting death of a Filipino teenager and shedding light on the abuse of live-in caregivers.

Throughout the years, the paper has also been a training ground for budding journalists, such as Janet Garcia (not related), Marilen de Guzman, both now working in mainstream publications, and Global News personality Kris Reyes.

The Garcias say they have no plans to retire and hope to continue the paper till the end of their days.

“The population is still growing and it’s getting bigger and bigger,” says Hermie. “We have more than enough issues to cover.”

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Based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, The Philippine Reporter (print edition) is a Toronto Filipino newspaper publishing since March 1989.
It carries Philippine news and community news and feature stories about Filipinos in Canada and the U.S.